The artwork, “Dali at the Age of Six, when he Thought he was a Girl, Lifting the Skin of the Water to see a Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Sea,” is a self-portrait by the renowned artist Salvador Dali, completed in 1950. This piece is an oil painting on canvas measuring 80 x 99 cm and is held in a private collection. As a representative work of the Surrealism movement, it articulates Dali’s distinctive dream-like and fantastical visual language.
The artwork presents a dreamlike scene with several juxtaposed elements that challenge the viewer’s sense of reality. In the foreground, a young child—presumably representing Dali himself at the age of six—stands nude at the edge of a vast, tranquil body of water that extends to the horizon. The child delicately lifts a thin membrane from the water’s surface, revealing a sleeping dog in the shade beneath, an act that defies the natural laws as if peeling back a layer of reality itself.
The background features a desolate landscape with sparse clouds dotting the sky, invoking a sense of stillness and solitude. The scene is rendered with meticulous attention to detail, employing sharp contrasts of light and shadow, which is typical of Dali’s style. The painting is imbued with symbolic content and surreal elements that are open to interpretation, offering a window into Dali’s imaginative and complex psyche.
